Creating a StrengthBased Appreciative Learning Organization Lothar Liehmann Craigwood Youth Services

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Creating a Strength-Based Appreciative
Learning Organization Lothar
Liehmann Craigwood Youth Services
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• I am always learning and working at the margin
  of my ignorance.
• Harvey Golub, Chair of Campbell Soup
• Former CEO of American Express
• Leaders are more powerful role models when they
  learn than when they teach.
• Rosabeth Moss Kantor

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Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin
it. Boldness has genius and magic in it. Goethe
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Primary Contributors of Present Direction
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Trends Major Areas
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Now, Discover Your Strengths
Now, Discover Your StrengthsMarcus Buckingham

• At work, do you have the opportunity to do what
  you do best every day?
• Gallup 198,000 employees 7939 business units
  36 companies
• When employees answered strongly agree to this
  question, they were
• 50 more likely to work in business units with
  lower employee turnover,
• 38 more likely to work in more productive units
• 44 more likely to work in units with higher
  customer satisfaction scores

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Therapeutic Management Literature

• Therapeutic Literature
• Gap between talk walk delivering strength-
  based therapies in deficit based cultures
• Solution Focused Therapy
• Counselling Psychology
• Management Literature
• Positive Organizational Scholarship Growth
  Fixed Mindsets Neuroscience Appreciative
  Inquiry

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Analysis of Internal Functioning

• Deficit-based organization with limited focus on
  competencies
• Various activities related to knowledge
• Stressed workforce
• Measurement serves no developmental function is
  not part of organizational psyche
• Lack of synergy sub-optimal utilization of
  organizational resources
• Limited buy-in to need for personal
  organizational change growth

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What is a strength-based appreciative learning
organization?

• An entity that systematically leverages
  individual organizational strengths in the
  pursuit of sustainable high performance.
• Reflected in outcomes continuous improvement
• Affirmative, nurturing, sustaining of life both
  within with stakeholders
• Promotes a vision of the workplace that is
  fueled by generative conversation, evolving
  vision, emergent, more democratic structures,
  cultures rich in meaning relationship
• AI Practitioner, Nov.2008

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Organization Design Questions

• How does one design an organization that provides
  a model of stability for our clients while at the
  same time positioning itself for the future and
  being responsive to the changing needs of the
  present? What parts of the structure processes
  need to reflect stability while the remainder is
  designed for change?
• How do we perform well in the present while
  positioning ourselves for the future?
• How do you affect a major transformation when
  people are overworked there are inadequate
  resources to deal with existing pressures?
• How can you create an organization that employs
  the strengths of every person as efficiently as
  possible?

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The BIG Question

• How does one deliver strength-based treatment
  plans in a deficit-based organization?

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What is a Deficit-Based Culture?
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Another BIG Question

• What are the central features of an organization
  if its practices are focused on strengths,
  learning, and appreciative inquiry?

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• The complacent company is a dead company. Success
  today requires the agility and drive to
  constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and
  reinvent. Bill Gates
• In times of rapid change, the learners will
  inherit the future.
• Eric Hoffer
• The Ordeal of Change

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Appreciative Inquiry (See)
Appreciative Inquiry (Do)
Action Research
Action Research
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Appreciative Inquiry What is it?

• Appreciate 1. Valuing the act of recognizing
  the best in people or the world around us
  affirming past and present strengths, successes
  potentials to perceive those things that give
  life (health, vitality, excellence) to living
  systems. 2. To increase in value
• Synonyms value, prize, esteem, honour
• Inquire - 1. The act of exploration discovery.
• 2. To ask questions to be open to seeing new
  potentials possibilities
• Synonyms discover, search, systematically
  explore study AI A Positive Revolution
• David L. Cooperrider Diana Whitney

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The continuous creation and sharing of meaning is
the most crucial ingredient in an organizations
capacity to function in a rapidly changing
environment. The Appreciative Organization Harlen
e Anderson al.
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Strengths

• Most organizations are built on two flawed
  assumptions about people
• Each person can learn to be competent in almost
  anything.
• Each persons greatest room for growth is in his
  or her areas of greatest weakness.
• Buckingham Gallup found
• Each persons talents are enduring unique.
• Each persons greatest room for growth is in the
  areas of his or her greatest strength.

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What is a Strength?

• Consistent high performance in a particular
  activity
• Consistency/predictability
• You must derive some intrinsic satisfaction from
  the activity
• The ability is a strength only if you can fathom
  yourself doing it repeatedly, happily, and
  successfully.
• Leading change is about aligning peoples
  strengths so that their weaknesses become
  irrelevant.
• Peter Drucker

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Strengths

• Casting a critical eye on our weaknesses and
  working hard to manage them, while sometimes
  necessary, will only help us prevent failure. It
  will not help us reach excellence.
• Marcus Buckingham
• Criticism has the power to do good when there
  is something that must be destroyed, dissolved,
  or reduced, but it is capable only of harm when
  there is something to be built.
• Carl Jung

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Learning Organizations

• where people continually expand their capacity
  to create the results they truly desire, where
  new and expansive patterns of thinking are
  nurtured, where collective aspiration is set
  free, and where people are continually learning
  how to learn together.
• Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

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What Kind of Learning Do We Want to Pursue?

• Attention/Intention/Vision
• Triple loop feedback
• Strategy/Structure/Goals
• Double loop feedback
• Behaviour/Operations
• Single loop feedback
• Outcomes in External World
• Bill Torbert Action Inquiry 2004

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Action Research

• Action research may be defined as an emergent
  inquiry process in which applied behavioural
  science knowledge is integrated with existing
  organizational knowledge and applied to solve
  real organizational problems. It is
  simultaneously concerned with bringing about
  change in organizations, in developing self-help
  competencies in organizational members and adding
  to scientific knowledge. Finally, it is an
  evolving process that is undertaken in a spirit
  of collaboration and co-inquiry.
• Shani Pasmore, 1985 439

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Phases

• Planning
• Orientation
• Training Development
• Mgmt Retreats
• Beginning Experimentation Beginning Success
• Further development HR ldsh (included team
  leaders)
• Program Days
• Mgmt Review

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Particular Challenges

• ? compliance directives
• Cost of engagement
• Best Practices learning environments
• Follower to leader shift
• Seeing our theory in use vs espoused theory
• Existing focus on the urgent (daily practice)
  with no time for need to develop

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Whats Next?

• Performance Amplification
• Tracking fanning
• Importance of measurement BSC
• Broader Engagement
• All employees board
• Model Development
• Trustworthiness the deficit culture

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Trustworthiness The Deficit Culture

• Primary issues for us today
• Outcomes
• Compliance
• Trustworthiness competence character
• Outcomes ? Competence
• Compliance ? Character, Competence

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Levels of Principle-Centred Leadership with Key
Principles
Interdependence
Trust
System Synergy
Organizational Alignment
Managerial Empowerment
Stephen Covey Principle Centred
Leadership (modified)
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Desired Transformation Outcomes

• Culture change that brings life
• Optimization of human resources
• Shared leadership
• Employee internalization of continuous growth
• Reimaging internally externally to one of
  provider of solutions
• Leadership talent for future
• Performance oriented culture
• Generation of new knowledge practices
• IMPROVED OUTCOMES FOR YOUTH